I never get tired of 'em. I know we've discussed this before. I know the process is ongoing, not necessarily based on a single event, and depends a lot on your position in society. If discussing the radicalization of others, don't mention any methods unless people specifically told you that certain things radicalized them.
For me, I was a left-liberal for most of my life. Long story short, I ran in a state senate election trying to be as friendly to everyone as possible. The one thing I really wouldn't budge on was universal health care, since I knew from experience that it worked. I lost my election BADLY to a guy who ran on no platform at all, although he had much better name recognition. I worked so hard on that campaign and really was devastated and had to look for answers. Stupid as it sounds, at around that time I found the r/chapotraphouse subreddit and started listening to the podcast. That led to me listening to much better podcasts (like Revleft Radio), reading actual theory, and giving up on the Chapo podcast entirely once Bernie lost the last primary.
I'm always trying to radicalize others but I just usually get nowhere. George Floyd's death plus coronavirus I think resulted in a lot of people reconsidering things, but it seems like many of them have kind of swung back in the other direction now, at least as far as I can tell from watching my friends on Facebook. I've been arguing with my lib dad for months about all of this shit, with the result that he has actually gotten much better at deflecting Marxist points than the average lib lol. Sometimes I can get him to admit that everything is fucked and that Marxism is the only answer, at other times he'll say that we need to make friends with local business owners (some of the worst fucking people in the universe) and not alienate them.
Anyway, if you feel like writing your radicalization story or the radicalization stories of others, I'm happy to read.
Participated in a research project where we interviewed folks who had been evicted from apartments. This usually involved going into public housing projects to interview people in their homes, which I think made people more comfortable with sharing.
There's only so many times you can hear stories about not being able to make rent because you broke your leg and had to pay medical expenses, or getting behind because your two minimum wage jobs still can't afford the new gentrification-driven rent level, before you start realizing how fucked everything is. These were people who had worked their ass off just to try and have a place to sleep at night and food for their kids. It's not their fault that ambulances cost stupid amounts of money or that you can't get anything more than $7.25 an hour to work jobs in their community. One injury, one car accident, one thing goes wrong, and you're out on the street.
There's a person who has really stuck in my mind. This person used some kind of oxygen machine owing to a medical condition and had trouble walking. He'd been evicted because he couldn't afford to pay both rent and his treatment costs. He had no family. When we interviewed him, he said he was about to have the power shut off at his apartment because he couldn't afford his electrical bill anymore. His machine needed power to run. He didn't know what he was going to do. We gave him a couple of numbers to call, but god knows if he's even still alive now.
These experiences absolutely made me look at the current system with hateful eyes. Read a little theory, started listening to the podcast to hear their Epstein coverage, and now I'm here.
How a sociologist like Matthew Desmond can spend months living with the most exploited people in the country, write a book about it that wins a Pulitzer, and then have the audacity to continue to be a raging liberal with full trust in the system really blows my fucking mind. I'm glad to know that some researchers have a real change of heart when faced with these conditions.